travel to mexico with a child without both parents

graciesmummy

hi all,myself and my husband and our dd,4 and my dd,13 are going on a carnival cruise in feb,i have just read on a us based travel forum that if you travel to mexico(this is one of our ports of call)with a child and both parents are not present you may be asked to produce a letter of permission from the absent parent and if you do not produce one you may be denied entry!!!
has anyone any experience of this?

Strapped

Is there a problem with getting such a letter?

graciesmummy

possibly,my dd's natural father is very antagonistic and unreasonable and has lots of personal issues,we have travelled to the usa and carribean quite a lot and have never been asked for anything but have not been to mexico,i just wonderd if anyone had actually been asked to produce one of these letters

mackemdave

Who would know if you if you composed this letter yourself?....

Becles

We read that when we went to Mexico in 2006, but were then told that it doesn't apply anymore. We travelled without a letter from my ex giving permission for the boys to go, and we never had any problems.

mrcow

Yes - had exactly the same thing said when I went to Bolivia.

Well Bolivia came and went and no one asked for anything.

Do you have the same surname as your children? Can you take their birth certificates?

whitewing

Can you get step-parental responsibility for the stepdad ? You may be able to do this without the father's permission depending on her burth certificate (we did for my DS)

Would this then be okay?

graciesmummy

my dd has a different surname to myself,husband and younger dd which did make me think we could possibly be asked ,worse case scenario i suppose we could skip the mexico ports (2 out of 8 ports) although obviously this is not ideal

graciesmummy

whitewing wrote: »

Can you get step-parental responsibility for the stepdad ? You may be able to do this without the father's permission depending on her burth certificate (we did for my DS)

Would this then be okay?

whitewing,how did you go about this?and was it expensive?my eldest dd will be 13 if that is relevant

whitewing

My DS has a different surname to me, DH and DD (his choice now; he didn't want to change his name). He has his dad's surname. His dad is named on his birth certificate but it was prior to the law changing so his dad did not acquire parental responsibility, and has never asked for it.

This meant once I got married I could arrange for DH to have step-parental responsibility. (They did write and query why DS had a different surname to my maiden name so I wrote back to explain).

I can't for the life of me find the internet site I looked at. I will try and look out some details over the weekend.

Does your DD's dad have parental responsibility though as if so, I don't think you'll be able to do it without his knowledge tho you may be still able to do it? Also would DD be happy for you to do it as it;s not just a piece of paper for a holiday.

Also it may not cover what you need it for - I have no idea on that.

whitewing

Here is the form. Very easy process, but do get some advice from CAB or somewhere first as it says on the form:

http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/courtfinder/forms/cpra2_1205.pdf